Quantitative methods
Quantitative methods

Author(s): Sylwester Białowąs, Blaženka Knežević, Iwona Olejnik, Magdalena Stefańska
Subject(s): Economy, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Methodology and research technology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego w Poznaniu
Keywords: data presenting;sustainable development;measurement;levels of measurement;questionnaire;research;scientific methodology;sampling;
Summary/Abstract: The main goal of the chapter is to present the basics of survey research that can be used in analyzes of sustainable development. The first part presents the measurement levels. The basic characteristic of every variable is its level of measurement. It implies the following analysis and available techniques. This part introduces four levels of measurements: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio, showing their characteristics and examples. Then the focus is on the implications of a given level of measurement on the possibilities of the statistical analysis. The aim of the second chapter is to explain the foundations of preparing a questionnaire for the research on the issues related to sustainable development. An example of an organic food questionnaireis also provided. The third part presents considerations necessary for the sampling process. The main goal is to present the basic methods of calculating the minimum sample size, as well as the methods of its selection. This section presents the arguments for conducting the study on a sample rather than on the entire population, and also several formulas enabling the calculation of the minimum sample size. A discussion of the most important methods of selecting respondents to the sample—both randomand non-random, can also be found here. The last two parts of this chapter, describe the ways of presenting the results of quantitative research. They describe first view of the variables including frequency distribution with charts, central tendency measures and cross-tabulation. Finally, the methods of presenting research results obtained on the basis of the Likert scale and other examples of data visualization schemes are presented.

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